Why MYSTERIES? Because that is the genre I read. Why PARADISE? Because that is where I live.
Among other things, this blog, the result of a 2008 New Year's resolution, will act as a record of books that I've read, and random thoughts.

28 March 2009

WG 2009-12: Linking to the reviews of others

This week's Weekly Geek task relates to our reviews and linking to each other's.

1. Write a post encouraging readers to look through your archives (if you have your reviews in a particular place on your blog, point them there), and find the books that they have also written reviews. Tell them to leave a link to their review on your review post. For example, I've written a review for Gods Behaving Badly and Jane Doe leaves a link to her review of Gods Behaving Badly in the comments section of my review.2. Edit your reviews to include those links in the body of the review post.3. Visit other Weekly Geeks and go through their reviews. Leave links for them.4. Leave a note somewhere on your blog to let people know this is your new policy.5. Write a post later this week letting us know how your project is going!

I have been trying to do this as a general policy for some time whenever I write a new book review.

I have identified a number of other crime fiction bloggers, and often, but I must confess not always, check to see if they have also reviewed this book. If they have I put a link to their review on the bottom of mine.

My reviews are all listed at Smik's Reviews and you'll find that I have also created a customised search of the blogs of fellow crime fiction bloggers. I have only been blogging for about 15 months and so I have 3 lists: the books I reviewed in 2008, the books I have reviewed so far in 2009, and a complete list of nearly 150 books so far.

The crime fiction blogs I watch are found on Crime Fiction Journeys and you'll find the customised search called Crime Fiction Search on the top right of both Crime Fiction Journeys and on the top right of this page. There's an explanation of how Crime Fiction Search was created in this post.

So, for example, I am currently reading THREE BAGS FULL by Leonie Swann, and hope to write my review before the weekend is out. If I search my Crime Fiction Search for THREE BAGS FULL, then I can see who else has talked about it in their blog. That makes it reasonably easy for me to create links to their blog pages.

One of the reasons for doing this linking is to help create a community of bloggers with similar interests.

So, here is an invitation.If you read and review crime fiction, even occasionally, check whether I have your blog listed on Crime Fiction Journeys. If you are not there, let me know, and I'll remedy that, but I'll also add your blog to the Google list for my customised search.If you would like to make use of my Crime Fiction search yourself, I can email you the code if you would like it, or the list of blogs that it searches.

9 comments:

I agree, Kerrie, that it is nice to link to other reviews or discussion about a book when one reviews it oneself - I don't do this systematically but if I've remembered a recent review or discussion on one of the blogs I've read, I link to it (eg in my recent review of Careless in Red, I linked to your earlier review - mine was delayed as I was waiting for the paperback to come out!).I'd be delighted to have a go at putting the code of Crime Fiction Journeys on my blog if you don't mind sending it to me - I am not sure if it will work in the systems I use but I'd like to try it. I have used the search feature on your blog, and it is very nice - but it is just one more additional operation to have to remember to do and have the time to do, etc... if I have the link "to hand" on my blog, it is more likely to remind me to do it and the barrier to achieve "escape velocity" to actually perform the search is lowered. However, I have already winnowed down the number of crime-fiction blogs I read considerably, to those (relatively few) that I think feature well-written and insightful reviews. So I shall be interested to see if I have missed any!

Wow, I always thought I read a lot until I started reading other book bloggers! Hard to believe that as many books as I've read, and as many as you've read, we apparently haven't read any of the same books at all. Should our worlds ever collide, please feel free to leave me a link to your review on my blog-the more the merrier!